WATCH WITH* MOTHER: The Hunt for Lord Lucan
*mark s watches 20 mins alone b4 suddenly thinking that mum s might not know this is on as it’s on BORING CHANNEL FOUR*
mark s (shouts up stairs): there’s a programme abt lord lucan on!
mum s: what!! my lovely lord lucan!!** how much have i missed? has his sister been on yet?
*time passes – programme ends*
mum s (later that evening): was his sister on it at all?
mark s: sally? yes, earlier on. she came across badly: she was all “we didn’t think much of her, she didn’t really understand people like us, she was out of her depth” – erm actually sally, lady lucan is the one who wz bludgeoned with lead piping, not yr brother. “people like us” sounds a bit terrible in this context
*long gloomy silence*
mum s: of course i did hear that thing from someone unconnected, who heard from another nanny – that lady lucan once screwed the head off a kitten***
*long gloomy silence*
mark s: yes you told me before
*long gloomy silence*
mark s: “twisted” is probably a better than word “screwed”, unless the kitten had a screw-on head
*long gloomy silence*
*Technical difficulties led to some stretching of the term “with”: viz my mum put her back out last week and so was watching TV from her bed, while I wz watching downstairs. (My parents’ house is turning in David Bowie’s in The Man Who fell to Earth…) (but in a good way)
**ulp this needs glossing! mum has long threatened to write a book called “murderers i have known”: this wd feature i. dr buck ruxton, whose kids went to the same primary school as her (he butchered his wife and nanny in the 40s and was seen later picking the children up with a SINISTER PLASTER ON HIS FINGER) (the bodies were cut up and hidden in a scottish stream except he wrapped the bits in pages from the filey advertiser so wz caught after all); ii. lucan (mum wz at school with one of his sisters – see above); iii. mum’s dad had a friend who was “very interested in doctor crippen”
***DISCLAIMER: this claim is of course unsubstantiated gossip of the most meanest kind